Doing business with key accounts isn’t always smooth sailing. Issues are bound to arise, creating pain for customers. These issues require timely resolution, so they don’t develop to the point where the account is at risk.
Although account managers are engaged with their accounts at the greatest frequency, that doesn’t mean that they will always be the ones to detect the issue first. But it’s critical that they be on the lookout for trouble, so they catch it as early as possible.
Like risk factors, it’s essential to spot customer challenges that are causing them pain early while they’re manageable. Catching them quickly gives you time to overcome issues and prevent the account from becoming a churn risk.
Types of Customer Challenges and How to Resolve Them
The types of issues your customers experience are influenced by the specific product or service that you offer, but the following are some of the most common challenges you need to watch for:
Insufficient Value Realization
When a customer feels they aren’t receiving enough value from your solution, they may not be seeing the results or outcomes they were expecting when they decided to do business with your organization. This often happens when there isn’t an account plan in place, or the account plan is based on assumptions or insufficient information.
When this happens it’s time to dig in and get to know the customer more deeply. Voice of customer (VOC), SWOT analyses, internal account review meetings, and client collaboration are great tools to leverage so you can revise the account plan to better align with client goals and priorities.
And be sure to find out how the customer measures success so you can track your progress toward goal attainment from your client’s perspective.
Poor product adoption
Poor change management during implementation is often the cause of limited product adoption.
To turn this trend around you should engage with the customer to revisit the steps that were taken during the implementation process. Then review change management recommendations and remind them that a product alone will not solve their challenges or help them meet their goals. They need to change the way they do things in addition to implementing your solution.
Then you can collaboratively develop a plan to increase adoption and help them meet their goals.
Service or support issues
A slow or lack of responses, recurring issues to the same or different issues, and user error or product shortcomings can precipitate an abundance of support or service tickets and customer dissatisfaction.
When this happens, it may be time to increase support of service staffing, change processes for requesting service or support, expand service hours, or provide service/support staff with better tools and training. You can also create an expanded knowledge base for self-serve solutions to resolve common issues.
Insufficient Training or Onboarding
Many users within an account who don’t know how to effectively use your product may be a sign that there’s an issue with training and onboarding. If your account managers are solely responsible for onboarding and training new customers, this may be a sign your account managers are overloaded. If training and onboarding are provided by a separate team, perhaps it’s time to update the program to better meet client needs.
If you haven’t already, it may be time to take training and onboarding off the shoulders of account managers by transferring the burden to the learning and development staff. This enables you to scale your account management team without adding headcount and improves the client’s experience. You can also supplement customer training and onboarding with self-paced resources they can use on demand.
Unmet Expectations
Unfulfilled expectations can result in disappointment or dissatisfaction caused by things like:
- Missed milestones or delivery dates
- Miscommunicated capabilities during the sales process
- A lack of strategic insights and guidance
- Reactive instead of proactive solution suggestions
Regardless of the cause, it’s important to identify the unmet expectation and address it. If it is something someone in your organization caused by falling short of a due date or unclear communication, it’s essential to own it and create a plan of action to correct it. And in the case of insufficient insights and guidance, or reactive instead of proactive solution suggestions, it’s time for the account manager to realign with the customer to improve their level of satisfaction.
Lack of Communication
Customers that feel uninformed in terms of next steps, account plan progress, or the status of their service or support tickets may become frustrated or dissatisfied by a lack of communication.
To resolve this, account managers should establish an engagement cadence for each account based on customer input since not all clients want the same frequency or type of communication. All other departments should also put standards in place for keeping customers abreast of the status of their requests.
Proactively Prevent Key Account Challenges
Many of these key account challenges can be proactively prevented by establishing a repeatable key account management process and creating what Forrester describes as a customer-obsessed growth engine.
An example of the repeatable account management process is Our KAM™ Process. It acts as a roadmap for account managers, efficiently guiding them through all the essential steps of successfully managing key accounts.
Then ‘customer-obsessed growth engine’ includes three key elements:
- Creating customer value
- Internal alignment and collaboration
- Insights-driven future-fit technology, like Kapta
Once you’ve put these in place, you’ll minimize key account challenges, and your account management team will be well-positioned to spot any remaining issues as they arise.
Efficiently Identify and Overcome Key Account Challenges
Every key account relationship comes with its challenges from time to time. The secret to retaining VIP clients in the long term is to proactively prevent as many issues as possible. Then be prepared to recognize the remaining few challenges as they crop up. The earlier you recognize them, the better. This puts you in the position to successfully overcome challenges, thereby minimizing key account risk for your business.
Are you ready to proactively prevent key account challenges? Schedule a chat with a team member to see how Kapta can help you minimize key account risk.
